The Death of John Smith
by Daydreaming-with-ink
Summary: In the end, it’s love that kills him. They never get the happy ending they both deserve so much. Rose/John, set about fifteen years after Journey's End.


In the end, it's love that kills him.

That's what he likes to say at least, laughing on purpose at the darkness. He is diagnosed with cancer at thirty-six (_he looks more than forty but they agree on thirty-six because surely he was born the day Donna Noble died)._. A malignant cancer has been growing in the space where his right heart used to be.

"I said that I loved you too much," he intones lightly one night as she lies curled into his side. "I said it would probably kill me one day." Even though it's a joke, it cuts her.

"Shut up," she whispers, followed by a silence so thick he starts to feel suffocated. She's tried to avoid putting weight on his chest but he holds her tighter still, tolerating the pain just to have her close as possible. The bedroom seems too big, too empty and she starts to feel too small, insignificant. She's never felt this way around him before. It's a sign he's slipping. They're both slipping.

"I wish it was me," she says wistfully. "It's not fair."

"You'd want to leave me?"

"Better than being the one left behind."

He smiles into her hair. "Why Rose Tyler, are you being selfish?"

"Maybe just this once." She sniffs and closes her eyes, listens to the rain outside the window. It's as though the world is weeping for them, as they're both too stubborn – and afraid – to cry their own tears. She's seen the impossible and laughed in its face but this, this is a common reality she can't deal with. There is no doctor anywhere that can save her from this nightmare.

"Where would we be," he murmurs, "If not here?"

It's a game they've created in these last hard weeks to keep their minds from fraying. It was easy to pretend in the beginning, he could still work and they could still travel. Now he's confined to his bed and all they have is their imagination to stop them going insane. Without opening her eyes, she replies:

"New Earth."

"For the view?"

"For the new beginning. New Doctor, New Rose. Everything in front of us, nothing behind."

He makes a face. "But I don't like the cats."

"You did."

"I told you, being threatened takes the joy away."

She takes a breath as a memory sweeps over her. "You defended them. Told me not to stare. You called me pink and yellow."

He grasps her hand tight. "Now I'd say you're a bit…pink and grey."

"Not_ all _grey!" Out of habit she shoves him a little, realising too late as he winces. "God, I'm sorry!" she breathes out, but he shakes a hand at her attempt to make him more comfortable.

"Doesn't matter," he bites out, shifting up higher on his pillow. He smiles weakly at her. "You forgot."

"What're you smiling at?"

"Just for a second, it was like it used to be."

She doesn't have an answer to that. They lie in silence, his energy waning, and watch the rain fall.

***

Today he's too exhausted to be himself.

Jackie is about to pay a visit when she stops at the threshold, watching instead.

"Please have something," Rose pleads, "Even just tea?"

"I won't need food where I'm going," he says quietly, and it's the first time he's talked about dying since this started. Jackie watches as her daughter's breath catches; as she sets the tray down and climbs into the bed with him: her comfort spot these days.

"How do you know?" she asks, hoping to steer him toward the old game of who pretends to know more.

"I suppose it'll be better, do you think?" he answers her with a question. She's defeated already. He closes his eyes as she massages his scalp.

"Of course it will," she reassures him, "It has to be."

"You won't be coming with me."

"I'll be there eventually. You'll just have to wait."

"I hope Jake's there, for company."

Jackie's throat tightens as she thinks of her lost adopted son, who had stepped up to take Mickey's place in his absence. She's not too old to miss them.

"He will be."

Jackie is amazed by the calmness in Rose's replies that come without missing a beat.

She watches as a single tear slides down his cheek.

"I don't want to wait for you," he says, starting to crumble. She shifts closer to whisper in his ear, and he calms. As he falls asleep, worn out for the day, Rose's façade slips and she lies sobbing into his shoulder. Jackie wonders how much of her daughter will be left when he's gone.

_Please, _she thinks, _don't take her with you. _

***

He spends his last night reminding her.

"Do you remember…Raxicori…patorius?"

"God, even _now_ you can say it better than me," she replies, plucking absently at the button of his pyjamas. She's lying but she doesn't have the heart to tell him that his words are failing. Of all the control he's losing, she won't be the one to tell him he's lost his gift of the gab.

"But do you? Remember?"

"Let's see...we returned Margaret the egg," she counts events on her fingers, "Jack started a riot between two females and we had to run. Pretty much the usual in those days."

He gives a laugh that turns into a cough. "And…do you remember hopping?"

"That one time we had to hop," she nods. "I remember." She taps her temple. "I remember it all."

No matter how many times she's said it he's adamant that he check her memory. "Do you remember dancing?"

"You gave me a half-nelson –"

"Not that time."

"You'd just regenerated; it was New Year's –"

"Not that either."

"Elvis tribute concert four years ago?"

"Not _that _dancing." He finally whispers it, and her eyes widen.

"You cheeky…" something in her voice becomes firm and he meets her eyes for the first time since this conversation began. "_That_ is something I will never, ever forget. Promise."

"Promise promise?"

"Yes."

He seems satisfied at last.

"I was always so scared…losing you," he murmurs. "Now it's the other way round. And I'm still scared, Rose."

She squeezes his hands as tight as she can. "I know. I am too." They kiss, and she can't help hearing the words _last time _in her head. She tastes salt, doesn't care if they're her tears or his. She keeps her eyes closed and etches this moment into her memory, to be kept safe forever. She knows he's doing the same.

"_You _remember this for me," she says when they've pulled apart. "That tribute concert. Remember that song? Our song?"

He nods solemnly. "I'm silver."

"And I'm that golden sky. Now, tell me. Do you remember what we promised?"

It's his turn to tap his temple. "I remember it all."

"Good. Because I'm –" her voice breaks. She takes a breath. "I'll need that."

They kiss and when they've been lying in silence for a few minutes, he starts again.

"Do you remember…?"

***

"Rose. Rose, come on. You need to move."

"I can't. Not yet."

"But they –"

"Nobody is touching him, Pete," Rose snaps. "Not yet." She's been laying next to his body since dawn, feeling the warmth leave him as the hours passed. She traces the line of his jaw, cheek, nose and brow. Places her face against his and continues to breathe in his cologne, wishing that scent could be bottled. She could fill the house with his smell of crushed hazelnuts and warm rain. _If only. _Her mind would be filled with those two words in times to come, she knew.

"It's not him anymore," Jackie tries to tell her. "That's just a body, sweetheart, and it looks like him and I know that hurts…I felt the same way when your dad died –"

"But you got him back, didn't you?" she replies; her cold voice turns desperate. "Do you think I'll get him back? Like you did?"

Tony squeezes past his parents to stand at his sister's side. "Pretty soon that smell will fade, Rosie. It'll fade, and you'll just be lying in that cold bed." She hears rustling and drags her eyes up to her brother. He's holding up a battered blue jacket. "If you get out of bed you can hold onto this. It won't fade."

Rose blinks, as if a light has been turned on in the dark room. "His jacket…" she turns to the prone form of her partner, lover, best friend, and kisses his lips for what is truly the last time. She whispers that she loves him, waiting for just a second to see if he'll burst into flame and awaken to say that he loves her too. As he stays silent she climbs from the bed – though it seems to take an eternity – and into the arms of her brother, clutching the jacket like a lifeline to her chest. She allows herself to be removed from the room, ignoring the fantasy in her mind that tells her he's alive and waiting for her to come back to bed.

***

The funeral of John Smith begins at noon.

It's a very traditional service because Rose is too shattered to organise it, leaving it up to people who never knew him. He would be against such a common affair but she trusts he will forgive, given her state. She clasps her hands in her lap and does not take her eyes from the coffin. His coffin. Family sits in the front pew but Rose can't bring herself to sit under the pitying gaze of the people behind. She hides in the very back row with Tony, oblivious to his arm around her, deaf to the priest's words.

"You don't even believe in God," she whispers.

"I still believe in the afterlife," Tony replies, "There's got to be _some_ rest after everything, doesn't matter whose running it."

She hadn't been talking to her brother.

"…and so we pray for John Smith, pray that the lord will grant him a safe passage to the Kingdom of Heaven..."

Rose begins to regret ever leaving their bed, ever leaving him. Maybe she could have stopped time with the power of her grief, and kept him safe under the covers with her. She regrets not marrying him, because all she wants is to have his ring to hold, proof of their union. She regrets every ill spoken word she ever threw at him. _There are so many things I should have done differently, _she thinks, but in her heart Rose knows she wouldn't have a rewritten a single line.

"John's partner Rose has selected a song to be played as we bid a final farewell to our husband, son and friend. May John's spirit, strength and love be forever remembered in our hearts."

The music begins to play and Rose can't help it, she slips from her seat and runs to the casket before it starts to descend. She kneels and places a kiss on the wood, the cold of it burning her lips as her throat starts to tighten. She whispers the words they both sang once, their voices entwined like their hands and hearts.

_When you walk through a storm hold your head up high  
And don't be afraid of the dark._

She was never afraid of the darkness, even the shadows within him. That was how she healed him, by making his own monsters disappear. She can see him now, John Smith, her shadow of the Oncoming Storm. She can see his face grinning because he knows it's finally over and now all he has to do is wait.

"Wait for me," she murmurs as the casket descends.

_  
At the end of a storm is a golden sky  
And the sweet silver song of a lark._

Nobody speaks. John Smith is gone and Rose Tyler sits broken on the floor, silent. The music continues, her theme song, her serenade as she stands up and with an impossible amount of dignity walks down the aisle and out the doors into the sunshine.

_You'll never, ever walk alone._

***

"It's been almost two weeks John," Rose says to empty air. "Where are you? You promised." She rolls onto her side, facing the dark window because she can't bear to look at his empty side of the bed.

"I'm right here."

She almost jumps out of her skin. He's standing at the foot of the bed in a blue suit, maroon shirt and a fond grin on his face.

The first thing she says is, "You don't get new clothes in Heaven?"

"Well I haven't been there yet, have I?" He sits down on his side of the bed. "I've been trying to find you, like I promised. It's unbelievably complicated, being dead. Lots of paperwork for something like this."

She clamps her hands over her ears. "Don't say dead like it's nothing. And don't joke around. I want to know how brilliant a time you're having, not that there's more paperwork than an office job at Torchwood."

He's still grinning. "Blimey I forgot you were like this. Remind me why I came back?"

She tries to shove his arm, finds she can't. "I miss you," she says wistfully.

"I know." He bids for her to lie down and it's a strange sensation being able to feel him around her but not being able to actually touch him.

"I don't know how to do this without you," she blurts out suddenly, and starts to sob.

He hushes her, his expression sad and heavy.

"What d'you mean? Every time I leave you, I know you'll be –"

"Don't you dare say better without you," she spits, "Cus it's not true. I have to work hard to be brilliant for when you come back."

"And you always are."

She's about to argue, when she realises that he's right. That she's always done well on her own. That maybe she can get through this. It's amazing how he can change her mind in an instant.

"But you're not coming back after this," she points out.

"That's right. End of the line."

"I appreciate you're kindness."

"Well you're going to have to deal with it at some point, Rose," he says, and she can feel him starting to fade around her.

"Don't leave yet!"

"You've always been waiting for me, or fighting to get back to me. Now you've got to let go, and go slow. You'll get back to me eventually. Enjoy my retirement for me, okay?"

A tear rolls down her cheek and she sits up and nods. "I love you."

"Of course you do, look at me. I'm brilliant." He grins, his face beginning to fade.

"Don't you dare. You have to say it this time," she tells him. "Say it."

***

Tony listens as his sister talks in her sleep. He's heard her sleep talking before, about monsters and madmen, about fire and darkness and the Doctor. Except this time she's talking about John. Talking _to_ John. He wants to cradle her when she starts to sob into an empty pillow, but he gets the feeling someone already is, though he can't see them.

"Say it," she cries, and after a moment of silence he watches amazed as every line of sadness and tension eases from her face. As relief makes her body sink into the covers she starts to sleep peacefully for the first time in months.

"Thanks, John," Tony whispers, and closes the door.


End file.
